STOCKTON — A pastor has been named as part of an investigation into illegally running a funeral home inside a southwest Stockton church where unrefrigerated remains were reportedly kept.

The Rev. Steve Cooley had been cited more than a dozen times and investigated by the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau from the state Department of Consumer Affairs for what was taking place at Boggs Tract Church on 1605 W. Washington St., between July 2018 to Feb. 2019, according to a CBS13 report.

Among the violations mentioned in the reports by bureau investigator Scott Lang were allegations that Cooley misled a family into believing they were contracting with the well-known Jesse E. Cooley Jr. Funeral Service on 640 N. California St., despite losing its business license.

Lang reported that cremated remains were found in paper bags at an off-site U-Haul facility and they were stored in a “reckless and careless” manner.

Urns had also been found “stacked on top of each other” in a damaged cardboard box on the floor of the storage unit, documents show. Lang further stated that when he entered Boggs Tract Church he found an unembalmed body on a table in an unrefrigerated room.

Carla Southerland told CBS13 that after the death of her father, Robert Oliveira, on Oct. 17, 2018, her family was unaware that the funeral home they were referred to by the hospital had closed three months earlier and has since been operating under a new name. Instead, the person who answered the phone number she was given told her to make arraignments at the Boggs Tract church.

Ultimately, Oliveira’s remains would not make it on time to his own funeral service in Vallejo 11 days later.

“I was like, Oh, my God. How do you tell somebody ‘I’m sorry he didn’t make it here?’ ” Southerland told CBS13.

Attempts by The Record to reach Steve Cooley, the Jesse E. Cooley Jr. Funeral Service and Southerland were unsuccessful.

Listed phone numbers for the California Street business and the Boggs Tract Church were not in service. A representative of the Jesse E. Cooley Jr. Funeral Service office in Fresno declined to comment.

However, Steve Cooley’s name appears outside the Boggs Tract Church, but no one answered a knock at the door on Friday. Curtains were drawn over windows and the lights were turned off inside. Five black hearses were parked in a gravel parking lot next door.

Founded in 1939, the funeral service was the Central Valley’s first to be operated by an African-American. The Stockton branch opened in 1971, according to Record archives.

A third-generation funeral director, Cooley told The Record in 2013 that it was a unique challenge to do things the right way at one of life’s most important moments — death.

“You can’t redo a funeral. There’s no room for mistakes,” he said at the time. “That’s the challenge — getting it right the first time and help families bring closure.”

Cooley told CBS13 he remains a licensed funeral director and a family dispute caused the Jesse E. Cooley Jr. funeral home on California Street to close in August. He said he was caring for a sick wife and tried to operate off a license for his funeral home in Vallejo.

“There is an area in the back of the building, where the refrigerator was for 25 years,” Cooley told CBS13. “If I didn’t have this church, which initially and originally was the mortuary, I would have nowhere to go.”

He also admitted that the church is not a licensed location to handle arraignments and did not have enough refrigeration. The cremated remains of as many as 15 people were stored at the U-Haul because Cooley said “the families didn't claim them,” but have all since been claimed.

The state fined Cooley $8,200, which he has reportedly paid in full. He told the news outlet that while he’s not handling any services at the moment, he hopes to get a license to operate a funeral home at the church.

“I extend my sincere apologies on behalf of Cooley mortuary and if it’s going to be deemed me being unprofessional, then I’ll accept that,” Cooley said to CBS13. “I pray they would consider my situation.”

Southerland was able to reclaim and properly bury her father’s remains.